


Heartstrings

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Bard AU, First Meeting, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Magical Influencing Of Emotions, Possessed Harp, hints of angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 16:10:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19232530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: In which Yasha is both a bard and a barbarian in possession of a harp that is itself possessed.





	Heartstrings

**Author's Note:**

> See, this is what happens when the cast keeps talking about Yasha being a rock harpist during the time she can't remember. Do they want bard AU's? This is how you get bard AU's.
> 
> Thank you to aunt_zelda for the title, it's perfect!

Mollymauk Tealeaf grins as he walks through town, handing out fliers for the carnival to passersby and practicing his sleight of hand by pulling sweets from behind the ears of children, to their delight. It is spring, the sun is warm on his skin, and he is alive to enjoy both those things. It truly is a beautiful day, and Molly is still smiling when he opens the door to the local tavern and is greeted with the sound of sniffles and sobs and the occasional drawn out wail.

Molly pauses in the doorway, the tip of his tail twitching against his ankle as he looks around at the sobbing patrons, the weeping barmaids. There’s someone playing a harp over by the fireplace, but Molly can’t hear the music over the sound of everyone crying. It’s as if he’s walked in on a funeral or a wake, but no one is dressed in mourning clothes, and if there’s a corpse laid out on a table somewhere, Molly hasn’t spotted it. He takes a deep breath, corrals his smile into an expression of sympathy, and continues walking into the tavern and over to the bar.

The bartender looks up when Molly approaches, the human’s eyes red rimmed from weeping. “Terribly sorry,” the bartender says as he wipes at his eyes with his bar rag. “What can I get for you?”

Molly pulls a few silver coins from his pocket and places them on the bar. “A shot of whiskey, if you would, good sir.” He gestures towards the rest of the tavern, where the barmaids are busy refilling tankards of ale, taking care not to let their tears fall into the brew. “What tragedy has happened here, that everyone weeps?” Something about the spring day has put him in the mood for flowery language, it seems.

“Nothing bad’s happened recently,” the bartender says as he pours the shot and places it in front of Molly, making the silver coins disappear into his apron. “Reckon it’s the song.” He jerks his chin to indicate the figure by the fire playing the harp, and Molly notices that the man is crying again, or most likely _still_ crying. “Can you not hear it? Just the sound of it makes me think of my Judy, gone these past five years.”

Molly cocks his head and listens hard. Yes, he can just make out the tune over the sounds of sorrow, and yes it is lovely, as far as he can tell. It doesn’t move him to tears though, doesn’t pull at his heart. Instead, it makes him think of the stories Toya has told him about trying to survive on the streets, about how she had used her beautiful singing voice to distract people while the local gangs of pickpockets did their work, living off her cut of the takings. This could be a con, but Molly doesn’t see anyone slipping between tables or sidling too close to the barmaids.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Molly says automatically before throwing back the whiskey, feeling the comforting burn as it slides down his throat. “Have you thought about asking—“ Molly squints at the figure by the fire, but the hood of their traveling cloak is making it hard for him to pick out any distinctive features. “Have you thought about asking them to play something a little more upbeat?”

The bartender shrugs and sighs as he wipes at his eyes again. “Sad people drink more.”

“Hmmm,” Molly hums thoughtfully, feeling just a little less sorry for the man now. “I don’t know about that. Happy people drink a lot too, and are also, you know, happy. It’s too nice a day for all this weeping.” He puts down a few more coins. “Another whiskey, if you would.”

The bartender eyes the coins before pocketing them, and makes no move to pour another drink. “You’re not thinking of asking them to stop, are you? Because then I might have to ask you to leave.”

Molly downs the second shot and grins his widest grin, the one that shows off his fangs to best advantage. “I wouldn’t _dream_ of interfering with your business, sir. Just wondering if they take requests.”

As Molly weaves his way towards the where the robed figure is performing, he’s able to make out the tune they’re playing a little more clearly. The music isn’t somber at all. It isn’t as lively as the songs Desmond plays on his violin after the shows are done for the evening and the alcohol’s been flowing, but it is a beautiful piece that certainly fits the golden afternoon outside the tavern.

Up close, Molly still can’t make out the features of the performer, but there’s a longsword belted at their waist and the muscles in their arms bunch and flex as their fingers move quickly along the strings of the harp. The harp itself is terribly unique, made from a purple wood just a shade darker than Molly’s own skin, with darker swirls and streaks decorating the wood in a seemingly random fashion. He can’t tell if that darker coloration was a natural part of the wood or if it had been stained in some way, but the effect is quite striking.

Molly reaches into his belt pouch and draws out his last silver piece, tossing it into the open harp case. “You’ve brought the room to tears, my friend. May I suggest something a little more… lively? Perhaps a humorous song about a hedgehog?”

The harpist’s fingers falter and stop, and Molly hears a sniffling sound from beneath the cloak’s hood before he hears the voice, soft and with an accent he can’t place. “Fuck. It happened again.”

The harpist sweeps back the hood of their cloak, revealing pale skin and a tumble of matted and braided hair that starts off black before fading first into gray, then into white. Her eyes are delightfully mismatched, one violet and the other a light greenish-blue, both brimming with tears, which the woman wipes away quickly.

“I’m sorry,” she says quietly, one hand still resting on her harp. “That happens sometimes when I play.”

Molly offers her a sympathetic smile. “Well, you don’t have to apologize to me, or to the bartender. He says that sad people drink more. I don’t agree.”

“They might drink more, but no one tips me for making them sad,” the harpist says with a sigh, glancing at the harp case where only Molly’s silver rests, then back up at him. “You’re not crying though.”

Molly shrugs. “I have nothing to be sad about. The day is fair, it’s Spring, and I’m alive. The only flaw is that I’ve seen to have forgotten my manners.” He gives the woman a small bow, adding a flourish at the end for the look of the thing. “My name’s Mollymauk, Molly to my friends.”

The harpist looks at him for a long moment before giving him a nod. “I’m Yasha.”

“Well Yasha, it’s a pleasure.” He gestures towards her harp. “Your harp is beautiful. Does it always make people cry when you play it?”

The question hangs in the air, and as it does, Molly gets the strong feeling that someone is staring at him. It’s not Yasha, who’s looking at the harp, and it’s not the patrons, who are wiping away their tears and murmuring to themselves. It’s not even the bartender, who is still busy keeping up with demand for drinks. It almost seems like the harp _itself_ is staring at Molly, and that it’s not sure that it likes what it sees.

“Not always,” Yasha says, and she strokes the harp gently, as if she can feel the disapproval radiating from the instrument. “It was a normal harp….before.”

There is so much weight on the word “before,” and Molly thinks of his own “before,” when everything had been dark and then it had been too bright and there had been dirt from his own grave under his fingernails. Life is filled with so many moments of before and after, and Molly can tell that whatever Yasha’s own before had been, it had not been a pleasant one.

“Well,” Molly says with a smile. “I know a song so ridiculous that not even magic could stop people from laughing at it. And perhaps sad people drink more and perhaps they don’t, but I’ve found that happy people are much more free with their coin.”

Yasha nods again, not smiling, but not frowning either, running a thumb thoughtfully along the blue tattooed line that runs from her lower lip down her chin. “And what would you charge me for teaching me such a valuable song?”

Molly can feel menace coming from the harp in waves and wonders if Yasha can as well. He’s heard of intelligent weapons with extraordinary abilities, but never of a musical instrument that acted the way this harp was. “If the crowd tips as well as I think they will, all I ask for in return is a drink. If they are stingy with their coin, well, then I was mistaken, and you won’t owe me anything.” He dares a wink. “Either way, you get to keep the song.”

Yasha’s lips twitch. It’s still not a smile, not quite, but Molly feels that awful, watching pressure ease slightly. “All right,” she says, and gestures for Molly to sit beside her. “You have a deal.”

Molly can’t help but grin as he pulls up a chair next to Yasha. He doesn’t have a head for reading, and he can’t remember a thing from before he had crawled out of his own grave, but he can recall every drinking song he’s ever heard in his life, which he feels is a more than decent trade-off. “I’ve only heard the tune played on the fiddle,” he tells Yasha. “I don’t know exactly how well it can be replicated on the harp.”

Yasha just places her fingers on the harp strings. “Just try me,” she says, and there’s a hint of challenge and pride in her tone.

Molly hums the tune for her twice through before starting on the lyrics, singing softly so as not to be overheard by the tavern’s patrons, only to have Yasha interrupt him in the middle of the first stanza.

“What exactly _is_ a hedgehog?”

“It’s a small, prickly animal that curls into a ball when it’s scared,” Molly says, holding his hands apart to indicate the size of the creature in question. “They don’t have hedgehogs where you come from?”

“No,” Yasha says simply, then goes back to picking out the tune on the harp as Molly continues with the lyrics.

“Wait, what does ‘deflowered’ mean?”

Molly chuckles and explains the unfamiliar phrase, which is apparently not as universal for taking a person’s virginity as he had thought. “Do they not have flowers where you come from either?” He says it in a lighthearted, teasing way, but Yasha doesn’t smile.

“No,” she says again. “I had never seen flowers, until I came here.”

Molly is curious about just where Yasha had come from that it didn’t have things like hedgehogs or flowers, but he sees no need to ruin a pleasant afternoon with personal questions. Instead he produces a flower from his sleeve with a flick of his wrist, presenting it to her with a flourish. It’s a sprig of bluebells, only slightly wilted. “Well that’s a shame. Flowers are one of my favorite things,” he says, remembering a different golden afternoon where he lain amongst the flowers and napped in the sun and it had been a perfect moment, if such things existed.

Yasha takes the flower from him, holding it with care. “What— what do I do with it?”

“It’d look very nice behind your ear,” Molly says. If he had been flirting with her, that’s when he would have taken the flower from her and placed it behind her ear himself, using that moment to steal a kiss. It’s a move he’s used on people he’s wanted to seduce before, and it’s successful more often than not, but he doesn’t try it now. It’s a decision born partially of instinct, and partially out of self-preservation. Yasha is the most muscular musician he’s ever met, and he has no doubt she could put him through a wall if she felt so inclined.

Yasha tucks it behind her ear and there’s the smile he’s been hoping for. It’s a small thing, like the flower, but it brightens her whole face. “Thank you,” she says quietly.

“You’re more than welcome,” Molly says, and is completely unprepared for what feels like mild approval coming from the harp’s direction. For some reason he’d been expecting jealously.

Molly finishes the song with no further interruptions, and by the end Yasha is actually chuckling.

“This song is ridiculous and downright lewd,” she says with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Run me through the lyrics again.”

Molly does, and by the end she’s nodding slowly.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay, okay, okay. I think I’ve got it. Mostly.” She still looks a little unsure though. “Ummm, I don’t suppose I could convince you to sing it with me? In case I forget something? I’ll give you a cut of the take.”

“Oh there’s no need for that,” Molly says, waving a hand dismissively. “You can just owe me two drinks.” After all, he gets paid—well, semi-regularly. More regularly and consistently than a traveling musician, surely, and she has room and board to think about where he does not. Which reminds him that he was _supposed_ to be handing out fliers right now, and the light slanting through the tavern windows tells him that the carnival will be starting soon. But this… this feels important in a way Molly can’t articulate. This person. This meeting. Maybe it’s about leaving places better than they were, and a big part of that is leaving people better than they were too.

“Hmmm,” Yasha gives him a thoughtful look. “All right. Shall we?” She strums the harp, and suddenly the folks in the tavern quiet and give her their full attention.

Molly grins, his tail waving in excitement. “Let’s.”

Molly will never be able to hear the hedgehog song again without thinking of a golden afternoon in spring, about how his voice had blended with Yasha’s, how well they had performed together for all that they had met each other only moments before. He’ll remember the tavern’s patrons smiling and clapping and singing along, tears replaced with laughter, and how the only magic involved had been good music, good company, and, okay, a generous amount of alcohol.

“That was incredible,” Yasha says afterwards as she counts out the coins people left in her harp case. “Are you sure you don’t want any of this? You earned it.”

“I meant what I said,” Molly says as he stands. “Listen, I hate to sing and run, but I sort of forgot the whole reason I had come in here in the first place.” He pulls out the fliers from the pocket of his coat and hands her one. “Come to the carnival tonight? We can get those drinks you owe me afterwards.” He’s wondering if the carnival has room for another musician, because gods he can just imagine the crowds they could draw with Yasha and Toya as a duet. Maybe he can introduce Yasha to Gustav.

“All right,” Yasha replies, and she’s still smiling a faint smile when Molly offers her his hand to shake. She clasps his arm instead and squeezes gently but firmly. “I’ll do that.”

Later, Molly will realize that’s when Yasha used her other hand to slip a handful of coins into his coat pocket. He wasn’t the only one with clever hands after all.

“It was an honor performing with you,” Molly says with a grin as he lets go, and he swears that he hears the faintest of music from the harp, as if someone had strummed a chord.

Maybe after the carnival, after Yasha has a couple of drinks in her, Molly can convince Yasha to tell him just what the deal is with her harp. It has to be an interesting tale.

Molly hands out carnival fliers to the now much happier patrons of the tavern and then takes his leave, walking quickly towards the edge of town where the tents have been set up, enjoying the oranges and reds of the setting sun even as storm clouds threaten on the horizon and the breeze picks up, causing the flowers in the fields to sway and the grass to rustle. He doesn’t mind rain as a rule, but he hopes that the storm holds off until after the show starts. Poor weather leads to poor turnout leads to being poor, after all.

Molly is immediately set to work the instant he gets back to the carnival, because there is always something to do before and during the show. He gets a moment or two to scan the audience in-between fetching things and helping people in and out of costumes, and there’s one point when he thinks he sees Yasha standing near the back of the crowd, and vows to get over there the next time he has a free minute.

The rain is already starting to come down hard against the tent by the time Molly gets another break, and when he looks for Yasha again, he doesn’t see her. She’s not part of the crowd that leaves through the main tent flap when the show is over either, and Molly wonders if he ever saw her in the first place. He thinks about heading to the tavern and looking for her there, but the storm is in full swing by that point, thunder and lightning and stinging rain. Maybe he’ll run into her tomorrow, or the next night. They’re in town for a few more days, after all.

Molly feels a small pang of disappointment when he doesn’t see her again before leaving town, but the feeling passes quickly. People come and go, after all. He had given her a flower and a song and she had given him a memory and a smile, and as far as he was concerned it was an even trade.

**************

Another town, another spring afternoon. A storm has just passed through, and Molly couldn’t be happier. The turnout for the carnival is always good after a storm, people more than happy to come out and spend some coin on entertainment after a day or two stuck inside. His belt pouch jingles with more money than usual, the result of a few card readings, and he decides that a drink is in order. After all, drumming up business is thirsty work.

Molly isn’t thinking about the woman from weeks ago, Yasha of the strange harp and the mismatched eyes, but somehow he isn’t at all surprised to see her sitting by the hearth when he enters the tavern. To her credit, she doesn’t look surprised to see him either, and her fingers don’t falter on her harp. She just nods at him as if they were old friends and she had been waiting for him to show up. It should feel strange. It doesn’t.

Yasha tilts her head slightly to indicate the space next to her, and Molly starts to laugh when he realizes that she’s playing the first few bars of a very familiar song. He grabs an empty chair as he passes a table and places it beside her, settling into it with a grin as he feels a welcoming presence emanating from the harp, as if it’s glad to see him too.

“You owe me _three_ drinks now,” Molly says.

Yasha chuckles and gives a little nod. Together, they start to sing.

**Author's Note:**

> I have more ideas (and notes. Many notes.) for other chapters, so keep an eye out!
> 
> Yes the hedgehog song is a reference.
> 
> I put Zuala in the character tags even though she's possessing a harp, because it's not like she's *not* in the story, and she *does* have opinions about what's going on.
> 
> This was originally going to be more fairytale like in nature, based on the tale/song "The Bonny Swans," wherein a harper makes a harp out of the body of a drowned girl, except it would have been Yasha and, you know, Zuala. I'm really kind of glad I didn't go with that, honestly, though I do have that original opening squirreled away because I never delete anything.
> 
> I'm angel_ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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